When Kansas lawmakers return to Topeka next week to wrap up this session’s affairs, they should give some thought to the brain drain which bleeds the Sunflower State of talent following diploma-granting time.
Here is a litmus test to apply: “Will this piece of legislation, this budget decision, make Kansas more or less attractive to our college graduates?”
When the Great Recession shrank tax receipts, the governor and the Legislature cut spending on K-12 education by 6 percent. Now Kansas is sharing in the national economic recovery and tax collections have rebounded. Which course of action is most likely to keep Kansas young people in Kansas? Restoring K-12 funding or cutting taxes on business and upper-bracket earners? A clue: Who has the babies who turn into students in those under-funded schools?
Does it make Kansas more attractive as a place to establish a career and raise a family when the House decides to short-change funding for the courts because it can’t browbeat the Senate into taking that money from the Department of Transportation budget rather than the general fund?
Kansas is the only state without a state-funded arts commission, which means it is the only state to deliberately rob itself of federal support for the arts. Is this a cultural decision designed to win the hearts and minds of young college graduates who are free to decide where they want to live and start their adult lives?
The Planned Parenthood clinics that were defunded offered medical care to low-income women in many areas of the state. Does this action against poor women make Kansas more or less attractive to the coming generation of professionals in every field?
Just asking.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
